Laura Schwendinger

Biography

Schwendinger is a Professor of Composition at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is also the Artistic Director of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley, where she studied with Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson. Schwendinger has been invited to present her music to seminars at Harvard University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, Yale University, the University of California at Berkeley, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin.

Schwendinger was born in Mexico City D.F. Mexico. Before her position in Madison, she taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Music Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Smith College and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Preparatory Division, where she started a program for young composers in 1985.

Career

Her setting of in Just- spring was performed on tour by Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish from 1997 to 2013 at venues including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall in London, the Théâtre Châtelet in Paris, Morgan Library, the National Arts Center in Canada and at the Tanglewood and Ojai Music Festivals. It is available on a Naxos TDK/DVD, Voices of Our Time, with Upshaw and Kalish and was recorded at The Theatre Chatalet.

Performances of her music include a "Pocket Concerto" commission by Miller Theatre in New York, Chiaroscuro Azzurro, premiered by violinist Jennifer Koh and the International Contemporary Ensemble, and her cello concerto Esprimere, written for and premiered by Matt Haimovitz and the University of Wisconsin–Madison Symphony Orchestra.

A Harvard Musical Association Commission, String Quartet, was premiered by the Arditti Quartet, a Koussevitzky Foundation commission. Celestial City, which featured the dynamic young recording artist Janine Jansen with Spectrum Concerts Berlin at the Berlin Philharmoniker Kammermusiksaal, Fable performed by Collage New Music at Harvard University, and a Fromm Foundation Commission, Nonet for the Chicago Chamber Musicians, which was premiered on "Live from WFMT" radio in Chicago. The Theater Chamber Players commissioned two works by Schwendinger, Songs of Heaven and Earth, and Magic Carpet Music, which were both premiered at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.

In more recent years, her Creature Quartet was premiered by the JACK Quartet on the Union Concert series in Madison WI, her Arc of Fire, a Chamber Music America Commission was performed on WFMT radio in Chicago and twice at Bryant Park in New York City. As part of Schwendinger's League of American Orchestras New Music Alive residency with the Richmond Symphony Orchestra in 2016, her Waking Dream was performed by Mary Boodell, the principal flute of the orchestra on their Altria Masterworks series.

Her work has also been performed at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln-Center, Times Center, Symphony Space, BargeMusic, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University, Corcoran Gallery, Poisson Rouge, and the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. Schwendinger's UnSafe Commission Shadings, for the American Composers Orchestra, was premiered at Zankel Hall in 2012, and her Seven Choral Settings were performed there as well in 2013, by the Trinity Wall Street Chorus and Matt Haimovitz, conducted by Julian Wachner. In 2012, she was commissioned to write a work for Sounding Beckett at the Classic Stage Company in New York City. Jenna Scherer wrote in her Time Out review of the work, "Laura Schwendinger’s piece for Footfalls is particularly effective, featuring stretches in which the musicians play their instruments so lightly, it could just be the autumn wind blowing through their strings. Beckett’s works demand postviewing brooding, and these haunting soundscapes offer an appropriately moody place to drift."

Among her many upcoming premieres and performances include her opera Artemisia, which will be on the 2017 Time's Arrow Festival of Music at Trinity Wall Street, and conducted by Julian Wachner by a National Opera Center and Opera America Discovery Grant. Schwendinger has been commissioned by the National Flute Association to compose a work for their Young Artist Competition, at their National Conference in 2017.

Reviews

Allan Kozinn of the New York Times wrote of her Chiaroscurro Azzurro as played by Jennifer Koh:

Ms. Schwendinger's work also lives in (at least) two worlds. The violin writing, played with equal measures of energy and velvety richness by Jennifer Koh, is sometimes assertive and rhythmically sharp-edged, but those moments virtually always resolve into a sweetly singing line. The grittier orchestral writing offsets that sweetness without overwhelming it. This is a work that seems likely to blossom with repeated listening.

Richard Buell of the Boston Globe wrote in his review of her chamber work Fable,

This was shrewd composing, the genuine article. Onto the season's best list it goes" and of her String Quartet "an unmistakable lyric intensity...a fine piece...worthy of the Arditti's attention,

and later of her Magic Carpet Music as played by Collage New Music: "Schwendinger's Magic Carpet Music like the composer's other music, rejoices in edge and has a force that has its way...Here is a composer with distinct voice." Mark Kanny of the Pittsburgh Tribune wrote,

The absence of any visual entertainment for Schwendinger's Buenos Aires focused attention on the musical excellence of her hard-driving quartet for flute, bass clarinet, violin and cello. She creates fresh and compelling lines that are brought together to a powerful climax.

In her New York Times Playlist review of Schwendinger's Centaur CD High Wire Acts, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote “in the works grouped together on this captivating disc… she sketches musical short stories of somnambulant fragility and purpose.”

Awards

Beyond those already mentioned, Schwendinger has received honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation, seven Yaddo Corporation fellowships, nine MacDowell Colony fellowships, and the Liguria Conference Center, American League of Orchestras / New Music Alive, Opera America; And was the first prize winner of the 1995 ALEA III International Composition Competition. She is one of a small number of composers to receive two Koussevitzky Foundation commissions.

Selected works

Discography